Fazil Say

Alla Turca Jazz op. 5b

The final movement of the Sonata in A major K. 331 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the Rondo Alla Turca, is one of the best-known piano pieces ever. Once reserved for all music connoisseurs, later played by every piano student, his opening melody, sinusoidally alienated, is now omnipresent even as a mobile phone ringtone. The arrangement by Fazil Say, which was created as an effective encore, ties in with this popularity. After the first eight bars have been presented originally, typical jazz elements such as syncopation of the top notes and embellishment by chromatic blue notes, embedded in partly frenzied sixteenth chains, are mounted on the still recognizable classical ground level. In keeping with its improvisational character, Say himself likes to perform his Alla Turca Jazz in other combinations, for example with jazz singers or orchestra. It is perhaps surprising that Fazil Say, born in Turkey and living there - if not on tour - does not return Mozart's adaptation of a genuinely Turkish music closer to its origins, as many of his compositions such as Black Earth or the Violin Sonata are characterized by a subtle combination of classical-romantic tradition, Turkish folk music and jazz elements. In another Mozart arrangement, the ballet music Patara, which premiered in Vienna in 2006, but now composed on the rococo-bound (and almost as popular) theme from the first movement of the same A major sonata, Say nevertheless carried out the connection denied to Alla Turca, albeit in the opposite direction. In distinct chamber music instrumentation, the piano stands for Western culture, the Ney flute for that of the Orient, atmospherically conveyed by sparse percussion and vocalises of a soprano.